


Birds of a Certain Feather

by thegizka



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gotham City - Freeform, Happy Birthday Jason Todd, Happy Birthday Stephanie Brown, I Don't Even Know, Jason Todd Swears, Jason is a Dork, it's comics canon though so it's flexible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 02:57:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15698727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegizka/pseuds/thegizka
Summary: There's a lot about growing up poor on Gotham's east side that has left Stephanie and Jason bitter.  But it does offer them something to bond over, and maybe there's some good hidden in those painful memories after all.





	Birds of a Certain Feather

**Author's Note:**

> I love the idea of Jason and Steph bonding over their childhoods, and I wish we got to see more of their relationship in canon.
> 
> Written to celebrate Stephanie Brown's birthday (August 10) and Jason Todd's birthday (August 16).

Steph pulled into a parking spot and propped her bike on its kickstand.  She recognized the motorcycle in the spot next to her, relieved that he was already here and she wouldn’t have to kill time waiting.  She was never sure whether Jason would be punctual.

The east side of Gotham was rougher than the rest of the city, which said a lot about the lives of its residents.  Steph usually avoided coming here. There were too many hurtful memories or extra things to worry about. She was rebuilding herself, but coming here always made her feel like part of her would be stuck in the past, unable to move beyond her origins and traumas.  That was one thing she and Jason shared.

They shared a lot more than she had expected, actually.  Getting to know the elusive second Robin had taken years, and Tim and Bruce didn’t make it easy.  To say they had differing opinions was an understatement, and tensions were always strained when they were in the same room together.  She didn’t blame Jason for avoiding the Cave and the Manor, especially when she had learned about his death and everything that happened afterwards.  But teaming up with him alone one night had revealed a more relaxed Jason. He still buzzed with pent-up frustration, but the jokes he cracked at her expense were playful, not cruel.  He reminded her a lot of the kids she had known when she was younger.

“Took you long enough.”  He was leaning against the wall of the taco shop, motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm.  She always wondered why he insisted on wearing his leather jacket everywhere. It made it easier for a nosy person to draw connections between him and the Red Hood, especially with the shocking red of his helmet.  Maybe he trusted his criminal reputation would be enough to protect him. Or maybe he secretly wanted trouble.

“I’m actually early,” she replied, lightly tapping her purple helmet against his in greeting.

“Well I’ve been hungry for hours,” he complained, but he cracked a smile.  “Happy birthday.”

“You too,” she grinned, leading the way into the little restaurant.

When Steph had first learned their birthdays were five days apart, she hadn’t thought anything of it.  She and Jason were evidently very different people and marked their dates of birth differently. That is, until they discovered they had grown up on the same side of town, the “poor” side.  Suddenly there was a common ground between them, albeit a painful one. Their childhoods hadn’t been easy. If you left the east side, chances are you were in handcuffs. Those lucky enough to claw their way to somewhere better never came back.  They tried to wash away the grime of the east side, but it was always there under the surface.

Steph and Jason were no different, trying to ignore their origins but being rooted to them at the same time.  It was something the other Bat allies were familiar with, but they could never fully understand what life on the east side did to a kid.  Jason and Steph knew, though, and suddenly it was something they could bond over. It started as asking each other about the places they used to visit, the sketchy corner stores and the parks that looked more like trash heaps and which streets they avoided on the walk to school so they wouldn’t get shot.  Then they were swiping stories about the notorious crimes of their neighbors and what they were doing when so-and-so did this or that. They developed a uniquely bleak sense of humor that they only used when together, often consisting of comparing childhood traumas to claim victory as the least fortunate.

The others didn’t understand.  How could they, growing up relatively comfortable and safe?  They couldn’t understand how joking about it with someone who had also been there could be so cathartic.  Bruce actually pulled them aside one day and tried to give them a quasi-therapy session, but he was never good at facing trauma healthily or talking about emotions.  To nobody’s surprise, it had ended with Jason screaming and Steph ready to punch him because he couldn’t possibly  _ know _ what it was like or fathom that talking that way with each other  _ was _ therapeutic.

Even Tim didn’t get it.  He and Steph had argued about it on several occasions when he complained about all the time she spent with Jason and how bad of an influence he apparently was.  She told him the real bad influence had been her childhood and this stupid family’s habit of avoiding actually dealing with their problems. He was mostly jealous.  He had always shown great sensitivity and support whenever slivers of her past erupted in her face, but now she was sharing some of that with Jason, and Tim had no way to access that part of her world.  It had taken him a while to accept that.

She had been surprised one night a few years ago when Jason had asked whether she ever thought about returning to the east side.  They had been sitting on a cargo container at one of the city’s sketchier docks, eating burgers and fries while watching the sludge of the river.  It had been a pretty slow night for crime-fighting by Gotham’s standards.

“I go there all the time as Spoiler,” she had replied, feeling the usual twinge of guilt every time a case brought her east.  She felt like she was somehow betraying the people there, lying to herself that she was now different and had some authority to find and punish them.  It happened much too often for her liking.

“I don’t mean on the job, smartass.  I mean as yourself, just to revisit some of the places.”

“No,” she replied abruptly, forcefully.  There was nothing about childhood on the east side she wanted to revisit.

He just grunted in response, plowing his way through his burger.  They munched in silence, the sound of screeching car tires and sirens soft in the distance, part of Gotham’s lullaby.

“The library.”  Jason abruptly broke the silence, and it took a moment for Steph’s mind to process the statement and fit it into their lapsed conversation.

“The one on twenty-seventh and Park?”

“Yeah.  I used to go there a lot when I needed to get out of the house.”   _ When I needed a break from my drug-addicted mother _ , she heard.  “It was one of the only free places where you could go and not wind up in a fight.  Because it was too quiet for anyone to get away with it, y’know?”

Steph hummed in agreement.  She knew all about the dangers of finding a spot to hide from your problems on the east side.

“Of course, the parking lot was fair game,” he grinned.  “The first time I broke my nose was while fighting Jimmy Rodriguez in that parking lot.”

“Figures,” she snorted.

They lapsed back into silence.  Steph remembered that library. Her mom had taken her there a few times when she was little.  She wondered if she and Jason might have even been there at the same time and never knew it.

“They used to read aloud to kids on Saturdays, right?” she remembered.

“Yeah, they tried doing that the summer that new librarian came.”

“The younger one with black hair?”

“That’s the one.  I think her name was Mavis or Marian?  Something old-fashioned. She was really nice, though.  Cute, too.”

“Aw, did you have a crush on the librarian?” Steph teased.  “You nerd!”

“I was ten!  Love wasn’t even on my radar,” he grumbled.  She just laughed.

“I wonder what happened to her,” she mused, stealing the last of his fries.  “I don’t remember her being there for long.”

“Probably what always happens to well-meaning people who think they can handle the east side,” Jason sighed, crumpling their trash into the paper take-out bag.  “She left as soon as she could.”

It was common enough.  Eager volunteers and charitable individuals would periodically jump into the east side filled with the enthusiasm of self-righteous goodwill.  It usually didn’t take long for them to realize the problems of the community were too big for them to cure, and they’d retreat back to the comfort of the city proper.  Hopefully they left before the violence and criminality got to them first.

As they prepared to return to patrolling, Steph mulled over their conversation.  The library had been a glimmer of comfort in the struggles of her early life, and now that she was thinking about it, there had been other places and moments that she could remember fondly.  She usually glossed over them when she remembered the east side, having stewed too long in her pain and bitterness over the hand she had been dealt. Maybe… Maybe there were things from her childhood that she did miss.

“Are you free Saturday morning?” she asked Jason, leaping across the rooftops beside him.

“I typically reserve the weekend for getting drunk and nursing hangovers.  Why?”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing that library again, if you’re up for it.”

He stopped ahead of her, and she paused beside him, waiting.  He had put his helmet back on so she couldn’t read his expression, and the wait made her want to chicken out.  They had been speaking in the hypothetical, of course. She wasn’t really sure she was ready to revisit those difficult memories.  She wasn’t sure she  _ wanted _ to.

“How about ten?  It should be open by then.”

“Ten sounds good,” she breathed, not realizing just how tense she had become waiting for his answer.  He just grunted and returned to swinging across the skyline, Steph a step behind him.

The actual visit had been...challenging, but generally pleasant.  Steph had thought of ducking out numerous times in the day leading up to it, but she argued that if Jason was prepared to return to the east side, she could be, too.  It was easier to be going with someone she trusted, and the library was far enough away from her least favorite places--her family’s apartment, her school, the laundromat they used to use--for her to feel a minimal sense of return.  She still wished she could be in the armor of her Spoiler outfit.

The library was smaller than they remembered--but then, they were older and bigger.  It felt strange walking through those dark rooms with their rows of quiet books. In a sense, they were returning to something, but they were also coming as strangers to this slice of a life they had left behind.  It lent a strange gravity, almost a spirituality to it, like this was some twisted pilgrimage. Yet the longer they spent quietly wandering, the more relaxed they felt. Just as it had been a haven in their youth, they felt somehow safe from the pain of their memories.

As they started to relax, warming to the idea that they had connections to this place, they began carefully leafing through their memories.  Jason showed her his favorite spot to read, a corner in the fiction section where he used to drag a beanbag chair from the kids’ alcove and hide away with a book.  Steph found her favorite picture book and spent nearly half an hour poring over the illustrations in  _ Animalia _ , pointing out all of the details she had stared at as a kid.  They browsed the comics section which hadn’t changed much in the nearly ten years since they’d last seen it.  They ran their fingers along the worn and wrinkled spines of the mystery section. They even found a copy of  _ Sense and Sensibility _ that still had one of those old checkout tags pasted into the back.  Jason’s name was scrawled on it.

“You really were a nerd,” she teased. “I never would have pinned you as an Austen fan.”

“It’s a literary classic,” he grumbled with a grin.

It didn’t take them long to traverse the whole of the library, even with their pauses and ponderings.  It had never been a big establishment, and most of the books were worn with age and abuse. There were a few kids there, shooting them suspicious glances as they walked by but content to sit and read and not be bothered.  It was somehow comforting to see that other people could find the same temporary haven here that they had.

Steph took a deep breath when they stepped back out into the hazy sunlight.  A tiny part of her wanted to duck back into the library to steal a few more hours of reprieve from reality, but that part of her belonged to her past.  She was stronger than that now. At least, that’s what she wanted to believe.

“Man, it’s weird to be in this parking lot and not be fighting,” Jason reflected as they walked to their bikes.  He tucked a crumpled copy of  _ Anna Karenina _ into his saddlebag.  Steph had been surprised he still had his library card, but it further confirmed how much of a closet nerd he was.

“Want me to break your nose for old time’s sake?” she asked with a grin.

“I think I’ll pass.”

“Hey Jason?” she asked over the sound of their engines kicking up.

“Yeah?”

“Next time…”  She took a deep breath to steady herself.  “Next time do you want to go to that park off of forty-sixth?  I used to go there a lot with my mom.”

She could barely look at him when he turned to examine her face, eyes peering through the gap in his helmet left by the lifted visor.

“Sure thing Stephie.”

She breathed out and allowed herself a small smile, not caring how obvious her relief showed.  He was one of the only people who understood the tension of wanting to revisit these places while wanting to run from them.

“You hungry?” he asked suddenly.  “Let’s go get some burgers.”

“Burgers sound great!”

After that, they had a routine.  Once every few months, they’d go visit somewhere from their childhood and spend some time adjusting the pain of their pasts.  Time wasn’t the only thing that lent a different lense to these visits. They were no longer the scrappy little kids struggling to survive in a hostile environment.  They had years of crime fighting under their belts, as well as years of grappling with traumatic events. And they were facing these memories with someone they trusted deeply.  They could be vulnerable without fear of that seeming weakness making them defenseless because they had each other’s backs.

It wasn’t easy to coordinate schedules, though.  Between the demands of daily life and the requirements of their vigilante efforts, they didn’t have a lot of overlapping free time.  But there was a handful of days in August when their friends and family were more willing to give them time off than usual. Between August 10 and August 16--their birthdays--they took a day to make a pilgrimage to the east side.  It was always bittersweet, revisiting old haunts and the shadows of their youth when they ought to be celebrating how far they’ve come, but there would be no Spoiler or Red Hood without the Stephanie and Jason of the east side, and it was somehow fitting to pay homage to those scrappy little kids while embracing their current lives.

Which was why they were now at Papi’s Tacos, a tiny family-run place that Jason used to duck into when he could scrape together enough cash to pay for a decent meal.  They first returned to it a few years back, and Jason had been thrilled to find Papi Sorreo still behind the counter heating tortillas and mixing salsa. He was such a charming guy, Steph loved him immediately.  They had returned every year since for lunch.

“Eeeyy, look who wandered in from nowhere!” Papi cried when he saw them walk in, a big grin on his weathered face.  He wiped his hands and popped around the counter to greet them, leaving two of his sons and one daughter to the cooking.  “Let’s get a look at you two. Just as beefy as ever, eh Jason?” He boxed Jay’s shoulder playfully before pulling him into a hug.

“ _ Hola _ Papi,” he laughed, returning the hug.  It always surprised Steph how relaxed he got around the people from his childhood--at least, the people he remembered fondly.  She had never seen him hug so much until they started revisiting the east side.

“And Stephanie,  _ bonita _ , as beautiful as ever.”  He pulled her in for a hug, too, planting a quick kiss on her cheek.  His slight mustache tickled her skin.

“Are you two dating yet?” Papi asked with a grin once they had pulled apart.

“Nah, she’s still stuck with my brother.”

“The adopted one?”

“Yeah. I keep telling her to to ditch him for me, but she won’t listen.”

“In your dreams, you ass,” she laughed, jabbing his side with her elbow.  She always swore more when Jason was around. Tim would use that as evidence of his bad influence on her.

“You never know,  _ bonita _ .”  Papi tapped the side of his nose slyly.  “Life is a funny thing.”

“I’m pretty sure about this,” she laughed.

“Ah, well, maybe you can at least convince him to pay for your lunch,  _ si _ ?  What are you hungry for?”

Jason did end up paying for lunch, but only because being the head of a criminal underground was more lucrative than the part-time shifts Steph managed to squeeze into her schedule.  Sometimes she wished she could join him in his anti-heroic crusade. It was the most dangerous part of spending time with him. After all, she was the daughter of a criminal, she knew how to think like someone desperate enough to subvert the law for her own gain, and she had a lot of respect for Jason’s efforts, even if his methods didn’t always sit well with her.  And it wasn’t like Batman went to great lengths to keep her around, either.

But becoming a criminal would be living up to the stereotype of the east side.  Even if she had more resources now, fighting crime as a criminal would still feel like losing to the endless downward pull of this neighborhood.  She would be another of its victims, and she refused to let it or her father decide who she was going to be. That was one thing she could never understand about Jason.  Didn’t he feel the weight of that stereotype? Was there any shame in what he did? Then again, he had lived through terrors that she couldn’t begin to fathom. If she was in his place, she might do the same.

“Got any exciting plans for your birthday?” she asked as they tucked into their tacos and burritos.  He shrugged.

“Roy’s stopping by, so we’ll probably have a wild night out on the town and get plastered.  Kori might show up, too, depending on whether she can escape the Demon Spawn.”

“I still think it’s weird that she had to babysit these kid Teen Titans.  It almost makes me sorry for her, especially with Damian in the mix.”

“Nah, she’s having a good time.  She misses us, of course, but these new Titans keep her endlessly amused.  I think she likes playing mom with them.”

Stephanie had a hard time picturing anyone playing mom with Damian.  The closest anyone had gotten was Dick, and he was a mother hen to everyone.

“Did you do anything fancy for your birthday?” Jason asked, wiping salsa from the corner of his mouth.

“Not really.  I spent most of the day with Tim.  He took me to brunch and the art museum, and then we hung out all afternoon before Harper and I hosted a sleepover with the girls.  Babs even stopped by, which was really nice.”

“Sounds pretty fancy to me.”

“You probably think this is fancy.”  She gestured to their tacos.

“Any meal I don’t have to cook is fancy.”

“You have no standards.”

“Oh come on, you  _ love _ Papi’s food.”

She just rolled her eyes.  He was right. These were some of the best tacos she had ever had, and she adored Papi and his family.

After lunch and warm goodbyes with the shop owner, they hopped back onto their motorcycles and headed towards the community theater.  Jason had picked this one. Apparently he was not only a book nerd but a theater nerd as well. Steph had stopped being surprised by these revelations.

“I used to sneak in here to watch shows all the time,” he shared as they parked along the street in front.  The building looked a bit worn, the bricks streaked with dark stains. A pair of gargoyles stood at the front to try and add some class, but their grotesque features--one frighteningly happy and the other with a frown that made its face look like it was melting--weren’t all that welcoming.

“I think I came here once.”  A memory was stirring in the back of Stephanie’s mind.  “Didn’t they do  _ Peter Pan _ here once?”

“Yeah, back in 2002.  That was a good year.”

“You actually remember the year?  How often did you come here?” she demanded, following him up the front stairs.

“A lot.”

“Obviously.”  She rolled her eyes.

“There’s a spot in the balcony you can sneak into from the outside.  I used to come here to study when I didn’t want to deal with people, so I watched a lot of their rehearsals.”

The outer doors opened onto a small entryway, ticket windows currently closed up on either side.  A few posters of their current season were tacked against the walls, as well as signs for ticket prices.  It wasn’t much in the way of a lobby, but the building was kind of small for a theater anyways. The doors to the inner seats, of course, were locked.

“Hey, it looks like they’re doing  _ Little Women _ next month,” Steph observed, studying the posters.

“I wonder if it’s a good adaptation.”

“Are you one of those the-book-is-always-better snobs?” she teased.

“Only when it actually is.”  He was studying the poster, committing the show dates to memory.

“You want to go?” Steph asked suddenly.  “If I put it on my calendar early enough, I’ll go with you, barring any sudden planet-endangering events or fake-death experiences.”  He just shrugged.

“Maybe.”  He turned to peer through the crack in the inner doors.  “It’s a bummer we can’t get into the actual theater, but they probably don’t want curious kids breaking in and stealing their costumes and shit.”

“You said you used to sneak into the balcony, right?”  She shot him a devious look. “Think we can still get in that way?”

“It’s worth a shot,” he grinned, already leading her back outside.

Jason’s secret way in required scaling the fire escape on the side of the building, hauling themselves onto the roof, and then prying open an old hatch.  The hatch itself only opened to about two feet wide, no doubt for security reasons. Steph had minimal trouble sliding through it to a catwalk below, but Jason struggled.  She snapped a picture of his legs dangling through the hatch while he grumbled and cursed, happy to have another bit of blackmail, before she pried free a pair of latches that allowed the hatch to open further.

“You must have been tiny as a kid to go through that regularly.”

“Whatever,” he muttered, dusting himself off.

The catwalk descended on either side to the balcony, and it was easy to leap across the short barrier to the chairs.  The stage below was dotted with pieces of a set in progress. They took a seat in the first row and just sat there, basking in the quiet and silence of the unoccupied space.  Steph could see why Jason would like hanging out in here.

“Did you ever audition?” she whispered, not wanting to intrude on the still atmosphere.

“Nah.  Rehearsals were, like, every night, and I didn’t have that kind of time.”

“Would you if you had the time?”

He just shrugged, crossing his arms and leaning his elbows on his knees while he looked below.

After a moment, Steph got up and vaulted over the barrier back onto the catwalk.  She walked out along it, vaguely aware that if she wasn’t used to leaping along rooftops she’d probably be scared of the drop to the seats below.  Instead, there was something simultaneously thrilling and peaceful about standing on a metal platform nearly three stories in the air surrounded only by bulky theater lights.  It felt like the library, a small, dark haven in this chaotic corner of existence.

They remained in that theater for a while, reflecting on who they were and where they came from, relishing the silence and the act of just being.  It was Jason who finally headed towards the hatch to pull himself back onto the roof. Steph made sure to re-latch it before hauling herself through the gap to the outside.

To finish the afternoon, they stopped by a small ice cream shop that Steph would visit with her friends after school.  Waffle cones in hand, they sat on a plastic bench on the crumbling sidewalk and chatted about everything and nothing, teasing each other like best friends.  And maybe that’s what they were becoming, some version of best friends. Sure, they hadn’t actually known each other for long, and they still didn’t agree on a lot of things, but they shared their childhoods in a very personal way.  It was a strange relationship to say the least, but the more they went on these excursions, the more comfortable they became with each other.

“Well,” Steph said once she finished her cone, stretching as she stood, “I suppose I should get going.  I promised Cass I’d help her with some reading before patrol tonight.”

“Yeah, I gotta prepare for Roy’s arrival.  He’s probably going to trash my safe house.”  Jason grimaced, but she could tell he was really looking forward to his friend’s visit.

“I’ll see you later, then.  Don’t get too wild on your birthday,” she cautioned with a grin.

“Whatever.  Take care of yourself, Steph.”

“You too.”  She gave him a little wave before easing her motorcycle onto the road, heading back to her apartment to change and find some dinner before meeting Cass.

There was a lot about the east side of Gotham that she still hated, a lot of memories that hurt, and she was sure she would never totally escape its influence on who she was.  But these visits with Jason were teaching her that healing wasn’t always about reversing the problem but learning to live past it. Together they were helping each other figure that out.


End file.
